Behind the Bastards · Cool Zone Media and iHeartPodcasts

Part One: From Elliott Rodger to Clavicular: The Story of Incel Evolution

March 10, 2026·1 hr 5 min·5 clips

Pickup artistry evolved from asking what women want to seeing them as mindless automatons you hack with tricks.

A malfunction opens the door. The host starts with a busted camera, Netflix approval to stream full video episodes almost everywhere except Korea and Vietnam, and the strange problem of making an audio show worry about faces. Sophie says he looks fine. Kat Abu Ghazali comes in as the guest, now using her full name because she is running for Congress in Illinois' 9th District. The banter is loose, but it has a job: get everyone through the weird opening before the episode turns darker. Then the subject narrows. The excerpt sets up a path toward incel culture, with pickup artistry treated as one of the feeder systems. The host has no patience for it. He describes pickup artistry as hacks, cognitive tricks, and psychological ideas wrapped in overbuilt explanations. That matters because the show is not treating it as goofy dating advice. It is treating it as a belief system that helped shape later communities. The break comes quickly. Right before it, the host says the episode will look at early generations of pickup artists and how they connect to incel culture. Then the ads take over. The middle and closing excerpts turn into iHeart promos, including Canadian public-life interviews, Formula One culture, crime stories, and celebrity interviews. The clutter is hard to ignore. It shows how easily the episode's voice can get buried if a listener lands in the wrong slice. Still, the useful thread is clear: the host is tracing how manipulative dating theories slid into a wider resentment culture online. Kat is mostly present through the opening banter and campaign plug before the episode moves into the grim history in the title. The tone stays dry, with jokes and glitches keeping the room breathable without softening the subject.

As heard by us

A grim, funny look at how pickup artistry feeds into incel culture.

This episode moves from pickup artistry into incel territory with the show's usual mix of commentary, disgust, and jokes. The clearest strength is how it treats pickup artistry less like a weird side note and more like a bundle of hacks, cognitive tricks, and psychological…

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Follow the pipeline from pickup artistry to incel community.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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